Bhaskar Rao's exit will leave Karnataka Lokayukta in a rut
The Lokayukta, the anti-corruption agency, was considered a role model for the rest of the country when the retired Supreme Court judges — Justice N Venkatachala and Justice Santosh Hegde — were at the helm of the affairs (2001-10). Their probes into scandals resulted in the resignations of a chief minister and ministers in Karnataka.
So strong was the Lokayukta during their regime that files in government offices would move quickly if any ordinary citizen invoked their names. But now the situation has changed for worse. Corrupt officers, who extort money from public, have gone to the extent of defending themselves because the Lokayukta more or less has become defunct in the state.
When Justice Y Bhaskar Rao was appointed as the Lokayukta in February 2013, there were rumours floating in the corridors of the high court of Karnataka about his capabilities. When the journalists questioned him about his ownership of a residential plot in Bangalore, he chose to ignore it. The same issue had led to the exit of the previous Lokayutka, Justice Shivaraj Patil. Unlike his predecessors, Justice Rao chose to maintain a low profile and refrained from visiting public offices. While people believed that Justice Rao worked in his own style, a different story was unfolding within the Lokayukta.
The PRO of the agency, a police officer, who for strange reasons was never transferred to his parent department after completing his mandatory three-year term in the anti-corruption agency and continued in the Lokayukta with a promotion, is said to be the root cause of what is happening in the agency today.
The RTI applications filed to question how the PRO was absorbed into the rolls of the Lokayukta were never answered. He came up with a unique plan — partnering with Justice Rao’s son, Ashwin Yerabati — and they allegedly extorted crores of rupees from corrupt government officials in return for insulating them from the Lokayukta actions, such as raids and traps. The two are accused of directly contacting the corrupt officials against whom public had lodged complaints, and extorting money to close the case. In the process, they broke one of the cardinal rules of the Lokayukta that no officer can directly get in touch with a government servant against whom a complaint has been lodged and leak the information.
This well-oiled racket ran for more than a year before a suspicious engineer exposed them. Today, both the PRO and Justice Rao’s son are cooling their heels behind the bars. The police have already filed charge sheet in several cases naming the duo as accused in addition to including journalists and RTI activists, who were part of the racket.
Justice Rao, instead of quitting honourably earlier this year, went on a long leave rendering the Lokayukta in a limbo. It was only after the Karnataka government passed a special legislation and the lawmakers decided to impeach Justice Rao, did he quit. On December 14, the government announced the appointment of Upa-Lokayukta, but the post of the Lokayukta is still vacant. It will take the government at least another month to finalise a new Lokayukta, but finding the right candidate will be a gargantuan task. After Justice Shivaraj Patil quit, retired judges had not shown much interest in taking up the role of the Lokayukta.
Whoever walks in as the Lokayukta very well knows that it is difficult to follow in the footsteps of Justice Venkatachala or Justice Hegde. The benchmarks they set and the standards they created have eroded in the past three years. It will need great efforts to win the trust and the faith of the people, who believed the Lokayukta more than the police as the remedy was quick.
If the Congress government fails to find a new Lokayukta by year end, the anti-corruption agency, for sure, will continue to remain in a limbo. More than 500 complaints are lying unattended in the Lokayukta while corrupt officers continue to reign supreme in the government offices of Karnataka.